Flutterby™! : District elections & housing supply

Aggregating Voters and the Electoral Connection: The Effect of District Representation on the Distributive Equity of the Housing Supply, Michael Hankinson, Asya Magazinnik, August 21, 2019

We find that the switch to district elections causes a 44 percent decrease in the permitting of multifamily housing. However, housing which is permitted is more likely to be affordable to low-income residents. Additionally, district elections decrease the spatial concentration of new housing by breaking the correlation between a neighborhood’s racial composition and the number of new units permitted. Not only is new housing more equitably distributed across the city, but it is less likely to be concentrated in minority neighborhoods. We close by discussing the policy implications of these findings—how to balance descriptive representation and local interests with collective outcomes in responding to the housing affordability crisis.